On Friday morning (after taking her medicine very amiably), went with the A.A.M. (who =would= go with her, though she told him over and over she would rather be alone) to the gardens of Worcester College (built in 1714) where they didn't see the swans (who ought to have been on the lake), nor the hippopotamus, who ought not to have been walking about among the flowers, gathering honey like a busy bee.
After breakfast, Isa helped the A.A.M. to pack his luggage, because he thought he would go away, he didn't know where, some day, he didn't know when--so she put a lot of things, she didn't know what, into boxes, she didn't know which.
After dinner they went to St. John's College (built in 1555), and admired the large lawn, where more than 150 ladies, dressed in robes of gold and silver, were not walking about.
Then they saw the Chapel of Keble College (built in 1870) and then the New Museum, where Isa quite lost her heart to a charming stuffed Gorilla, that smiled on her from a glass case. The Museum was finished in 1860. The most curious thing they saw there was a "Walking Leaf," a kind of insect that looks exactly like a withered leaf.
Then they went to New College (built in 1386), & saw, close to the entrance, a "skew" arch (going slantwise through the wall) one of the first ever built in England. After seeing the gardens, they returned to Ch. Ch. (Parts of the old City walls run round the gardens of New College: and you may still see some of the old narrow slits, through which the defenders could shoot arrows at the attacking army, who could hardly succeed in shooting through them from the outside).
They had tea with Mrs Paget, wife of Dr. Paget one of the Canons of Ch. Ch. Then, after a sorrowful evening, Isa went to bed, and dreamed she was buzzing about among the flowers, with the dear Gorilla: but there wasn't any honey in them--only slices of bread-and-butter, and multiplication-tables.
On Saturday Isa had a Music Lesson, and learned to play on an American Orguinette. It is not a =very= difficult instrument to play, as you only have to turn a handle round and round: so she did it nicely. You put a long piece of paper in, and it goes through the machine, and the holes in the paper make different notes play. They put one in wrong end first, and had a tune backwards, and soon found themselves in the day before yesterday: so they dared not go on, for fear of making Isa so young she would not be able to talk. The A.A.M. does not like visitors who only howl, and get red in the face, from morning to night.
